Poster!

So for our final Type II project we had to create a promo poster of our "favorite" band and it had to represent a collage and/or montage aspect. We were supposed to highlight an album and include tour dates and what not (although this aspect was fairly lax), and we were supposed to represent who the band was and what they liked/stood for, etc... We *technically* only had two class periods to work on our designs, so this was a lighting fast project. However, that being said, this was my most favorite project and the one that I feel I did the best on.

The band I chose was The Gaslight Anthem (if you haven't heard of them you should definitely check them out! They are amazing - and while not my favorite favorite band, they are a band that I really like!) and I decided to highlight their "sink or swim" album (however, I would highly recommend their "'59 sound" album!). I saw this band about a year and a half ago at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC and just loved them - they have this old-timey feel to them, where they kind of come off as "greasers" from the 50's or 60's with tattoos covering them. Their songs are very much about relationships and life and it just makes you feel like you are hearing about the noir time period.

ANYWAY, like I said I highlighted their sink or swim album and I wanted to make the poster a collage of traditional tattoo flash with a nautical theme. So, what I did, was hand draw each element of the poster on paper, then scan it in to the computer and manipulated it then in Photoshop. I had a lot of fun with it. If I had a little more time I would have liked to connect the rope (in both the band name and the anchor) altogether and to the ship in the top left corner. Otherwise, I am completely content with how this turned out.

Again, like all my other projects, I will probably tweak some things here and there in the future, but otherwise I love it.

-Erika

Final Calendar Design

Here is the outcome of my calendar design - and let me say this was probably my least favorite project. I was a little overly ambitious and it really came around to bite me in the butt. I used that stylized type that I created out of brushes I made in Illustrator. Well, since I wanted to highlight the northern and southern hemisphere that really made it double duty on myself and I thought it would easy but as I added more and more months, the file size got larger and larger, which made it difficult to work in indesign as the program slowed WAY down because I had to keep the vector images sharp so I could see what I was doing, but anyway - I could rant about that for a long time... When I look at it though, I just feel like it's lacking a bit all around. (I am my own worst critic if you couldn't tell). Even though I did finish the project, I do feel like I should go back and work on it eventually. I wish I had highlighted numbers a little bit better as this was for the "numeric institute" but what I decided to do was make it as though the "numeric institute" was featuring their artists series where designers created their own calendars and the "numeric institute" was selling them for the artists.

Anyway this is a long post - the first calendar being the northern hemisphere and the second being the southern hemisphere so enjoy!

-Erika

PSD tut quatro? (four)

So I took this PSD tut on changing color of this car and it was a really long tutorial that really had more detail then I was looking for, so I just stopped when I changed the color. I even changed the color again to something other than what I was told to do just to get a feel for it. I must say I was a little lax on using my pen tool around the car too, but I really didn't want to spend TOO much time on it, if I could just get the concept down.

Here's the link for it:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/give-a-yellow-lamborghini-a-paint-job-in-photoshop/

Here's the before:

Here's my 1st one (as instructed)

Here's my 2nd one (my choice of color)

PSD Tut tres...novices beware

So here is my PSD Tut on how to make transparent glass lettering...

It was an awful tutorial. I literally only got to the 3rd step (out of 10 I think) - and the guy just tells you to copy the layer effects used from the sample. The CRAZY thing is, even when I did that (because there was no precise instructions on what to do) it looked NOTHING like what was in the example!! SO I spent like 45 min. tweaking what I had to make this, which I think looks good, but I would have liked to have a finished look like the tut does. ANYWAY - I usually read about how difficult the tuts are before I start them, and I must have only read the ones that said it was good, because when I looked back at them SO many said that it was confusing and missing steps.

Just my luck to put in an hours worth of work with no progress. humph.

Mine:

Tut:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects-tutorials/transparent-glass-lettering-in-photoshop/

-Erika

Calendar update.... technology woes.

So I don't understand it, but technology seems to be failing me lately. I have started to make the months for my calendar out of that stylized treatment on the type I am using - and I realized after you make one letter it is REALLY easy to make the rest, however, my computer is being extra crappy today. Now don't get me wrong, I love my macbook baby, but it's been freezing up Illustrator every time I save something AND won't even let me open InDesign...what the hell.

Good news is I do have something to show, unfortunately it is just the word January...however, I should be able to get all my months finished today in class on the class Mac's and then all I'll need to work on is my actual table for the days (which should be easy now that I know how to do tables in InDesign). Anyway, here's an update. I've decided to approach this project by working on individual elements first, rather than working on one month at a time. Today I plan on finishing the treatment for the months, and then work on the tables for the days of the week. Then I am going to make tree limbs out of that same stylized treatment and then add the details for that illustration later... Well, it's all in my head - I know what to do, I just have to do it now!

-Highly frustrated and technologically challenged,

Erika.

PSD tut dos

Here is my second tutorial. It was supposed to represent a sugar bag, however I chose a different font so it doesn't quite represent what the tutorial was exactly teaching. It was really easy though, I feel like what took the most time was just reading everything. Otherwise, the tutor did really well in describing EVERY step.

Here's what it was supposed to look like (click the pic to go to the link):

Here's my final product:

Quiz on Tables

Here is my not so beautiful, but (in my opinion) well table-ized calendar. I didn't want to put too much effort into making it as I want to be able move on and work on my other calendar elements right now. But, I did use and manipulate a few things learned from the linda.com tutorial/walk through.

Here it is (again not beautiful, but using elements that were needed to show I know how to use the table functions in InDesgin):

-Erika

Concept

So I do not have any physical progress to show today, as I have decided I would like to do an illustrator tutorial to create the type for the front cover along with the months. I am hoping that this will all work out to where I can also take the same style of the type and make it into the actual illustrations I create for each month. I can tell I have a lot of work ahead of me! Here is the tutorial of the type treatment I am going to use:

I am hoping to showcase this treatment in a vairety of ways throughout my entire calendar!

Wish me luck!!

-Erika

Calendar Inspirations & Ideas

So our next project is a desk calendar for the Numerical Institute (a made up company :D). I have a few inspirations I found on etsy that give me an idea of what I personally like. I know I would like to represent time passing through something like a plant (kind of like the one below with the tree...) or possibly with the actual paper changing from dark to light and back to dark for the change in the amount of light we have during the day. Also, I know I would like to focus on using just illustrations and not photos, as I used photos in the last project. I would also like to have a two-for-one type of calendar in that, on one side would represent the Northern Hemisphere, including holidays and observances from around the world in JUST the Northern Hemisphere, and on the other side it would represent the Souther Hemisphere and the holidays and seasons that change in that part of the world. This way, people from around the world could potentially purchase this calendar and it would adequately and fairly represent where they live.

Here are some of my inspirations from etsy:

Photoshop tut uno.

So here is the first photoshop tutorial we had to do. I chose one called "plastic jelly style" and can honestly say I actually liked doing it. I had painfully tried 3+ times in my class last week but I think that practice of getting familiar with what I was looking for helped me do it a final time. I didn't understand ALL the steps, but I got far enough to where someone could say "yep, that looks like a plastic jelly style." I know there are tons of cool stuff on photoshop, it's just a bit intimidating since now I am used to illustrator and indesign...photoshop is like a completely new world but it seems like it has so many more functions and possibilities then any other program i've used thus far. Anyway, here is my final product:

-Erika

Final Newsletter

So here are the spreads to my final newsletter - I actually had a lot of fun with this and I was really impressed with how it turned out. The first image is of the first spread which is the front and the back, and the second image is of the inside spread.

For our project we were supposed to choose either a topic of "design now", "global now" or "fashion now" and I chose a mixture of design and global. We were also supposed to highlight the aspect of a newsletter (like a nameplate, bylines, headlines, etc...) I used all of my own photography that I had taken while I was on a trip to Australia (in 2006 - yikes that was so long ago) and I touched them up in photoshop.

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I wanted this newsletter to highlight different parts of the world's architecture each month, so I decided to fictitiously begin the process with Australia, simply because I took a lot of interesting pictures while I was there. You can see that one the inside spread I had to do what I like to call "information lines" as they were not true articles. As I kind of worked outside the box a bit, I wanted to just feature information on certain places in the world then have one (or two) actual articles written by people that might not actually relate to the site visited, but it be an article about architecture. Anyway, I had to work with the pictures I took, so I obviously had to find relative information about them to put in the newsletter. I also wanted this to seem like it was a brand new newsletter company starting up so I included a letter from the editor on the front.

I like to think it turned out nice and polished. (I will probably do a little tweaking in the future!)

-Erika

Update on Nameplate

nameplate update

So here is my (not so fully finished), tediously painful, OTHER idea for a nameplate. I was going for the idea of a blueprint, so obviously, as you can tell, I have only built the structure and now need to add more details within the structure of "WHERE". I am actually really excited how this is going to turn out, just a lot more to do!

-Erika

Newsletter Nameplate in the making...

So the next project I am working on is a newsletter. I am in the process right now creating a nameplate for the newsletter and I have one example to share. The idea of the newsletter I am creating is a global design newsletter that will highlight architecture or some aspect of design in various parts of the world. As this is a project, I will only be highlighting Australia, but the idea is that every newsletter will introduce another part of the world and their designs/architecture.

I decided to call my newsletter: "WHERE" global design newsletter. Below is a few examples of one idea that places a few pictures into the "WHERE" part of the nameplate. The idea for this nameplate is that for every place that is highlighted every issue, a picture of an architectural structure, or piece of design will fill in the "WHERE".

Another idea that I had, and am still trying to figure out how to compile, is making the nameplate into a sort-of blue print looking type. I really like this idea, but I have to put a little more thought into it so that it looks precise and structural, to represent the idea of architecture. If I go with this nameplate then it will not change from issue to issue, but instead stay the same.